You sometimes think of villagers and similar parts as no more than mobile scenery, and sometimes they are. Here, they seemed to be individuals completely involved with the story and reacting to it like real people.

It is pretty much guaranteed that when you listen to her newest album, Lynn Teeter Flower, you will fall in love with Maria Taylor. However, just when you think it is impossible to love her anymore, you meet her, and find out that the Alabama native with a soft southern accent is even more amazing in person.

After all the talk of potential pitfalls and uninformed controversy that surround "United 93" fades, Paul Greengrass's film will stand up as a masterpiece. It captures the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001 and the people who witnessed it with bewilderment and horror, and does so without contrivance or dramatic pretense.

The late Philip K. Dick's novels and short stories have been the starting point for many films, but most of them abandon Dick's challenging ideas and free-flowing philosophy after cribbing his intriguing science-fiction setups. Richard Linklater's animated feature "A Scanner Darkly," however, is completely loyal to its source's spirit, full of absurd, funny and sad characters trapped in a slightly more desolate version of our modern world.

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